John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I may be a latecomer to this series -- I only saw the first two last week -- but John Wick is a pretty awesome action series, and the latest installment is probably my favorite so far.

Recently declared excommunicated from the league of assassins, a severely wounded John Wick is on the run in Manhattan. With less than an hour to go, he seeks aid and resources before his former associates and rivals will attempt to claim the sizable bounty on his head. With every step, John notices innocuous folks on the streets watching him, knowing full well they have money on their mind and murder at their fingertips. Who knew there were so many assassins in New York? (Said no one ever.)

With the lack of need for exposition, we dive headfirst into the melee as John fights for his life. He also fights to take lives, as the first act of this nonstop-action flick is nothing if not a massacre. Spectacular fight after brutal assault, it's the cinematic equivalent of a roller coaster, churning your stomach, making you squeal, and inciting laughs of genuine humor or sympathetic pain. It's occasionally disturbing, in the theater, to hear other viewers laughing hysterically at a man getting his head smashed or bones crunched because you're never sure if you're sitting in a dark room with psychos, sadists, or just discomforted people confronted with agony.

But John Wick 3 is probably my favorite yet in the series. Here, it's all balls-out mayhem and style, a gorgeous and wicked fever dream of an action movie in which blood spills, skin rips, and it's all done in a tasteful way. Tasteful, but perhaps because it's so tasteless. It's a nearly unique aesthetic -- the kind Tarantino only wishes he could dish out -- and while I desperately wish for another Atomic Blonde, I'll accept another installment of this franchise. Especially now that Halle Berry brings her attack dogs to the fray!

That, and the stars are still in play. Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, and now Angelica Huston? We'll take some more of that, please!

Tolkien (2019)

Score: 2 / 5

Orphaned teenager Ronald is an outcast at his new school, probably because he's too smart for his own good. One of his first lessons sees a bully steal his textbook before he's called on to read Chaucer in Old English; as the other students prepare to watch him be shamed by the professor, he recites the passage beautifully from memory. This earns him no friends. Not yet.

Taking center stage in Tolkien, a biopic of the young J.R.R. Tolkien in adventures of life and love, is Nicholas Hoult as the esteemed writer. His solid performance is matched by his comrades, notably Lily Collins as his love Edith Bratt and Anthony Boyle as his friend Geoffrey Bache Smith. Young Tolkien's hard work and brilliant mind eventually earn him the respect -- and, yes, friendship -- of three other young men including Geoffrey, and together the four create a club of intellectual artists. Meanwhile Tolkien maneuvers ever closer to Edith, whose life is far more restricted than his own and who seems to fall in love with the freedoms Tolkien's imagination offers her.

We see hints, occasionally, of Tolkien's legendarium in his early life, but the film largely glosses over the significant events and works that inspired his greatest creation (or, if you know better, his "sub-creation"). The closest we get to witnessing his genius blossom is in the heat of World War I, as he fights through the Battle of the Somme. Clouds of gas belch forth visions of wraiths and ghosts, one explosion may be a balrog's attack and another spews from a dragon's maw. Tolkien plunges through pools of mud and blood choking with bodies in what we might call dead marshes while green poisonous gas oozes through the trenches. It's really the only sequence in the film worth watching.

The film hosts, now I think on it, two other scenes that are interesting for other reasons. One is between Tolkien and his friend Geoffrey, strongly indicated in the film to be queer and filled with unrequited love for his comrade. The two are together the morning after Tolkien learned his childhood love Edith is engaged to another man and drank himself into a stupor; Geoffrey delivers a stunning speech about unrequited love being the most pure, beautiful, and terrible thing a man can know: a perfect subject for poetry. The other interesting scene comes immediately after, when Tolkien meets and begins to learn from Professor Joseph Wright (played by Derek Jacobi).

These scenes are the only moments in the film of gorgeous screenwriting. Everything else falls woefully short of the grandeur and potential insight into Tolkien's life. His religious ideas are almost totally erased, as are his childhood and years after WWI. The actual inspirations and influences on his work are skated over, suggested, or completely ignored. Instead, we get a lovely romance about how a man maneuvers between coming of age, love, and burgeoning artistic genius. Too bad they had to tack on the real-life names and so blatantly water down everything interesting about the real man.

Detective Pikachu (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Who knew we'd get a live-action Pokemon movie? Who knew we'd actually enjoy it?

When Tim, a coming-of-age insurance salesman searching for his purpose, learns that his detective father died in a car crash, he travels to Ryme City to collect his father's belongings. En route, he meets fluff columnist Lucy, looking for her own big break, and the two begin investigating the detective's death after meeting his father's Pokemon partner, a Pikachu only Tim can understand in English. The amnesiac Pikachu hints that Tim's father was on to some dark dealings in the heart of Ryme City.

It's all fairly standard noir stuff, and the detective story itself tends to fall dramatically flat. What makes up for the forced narrative, though, is the gorgeous detail that went into Ryme City itself. The city breathes with seedy life, glistening with fluorescent reflections and always doused with a grimy dew. Its atmospheric presence provides a striking backdrop to the drama and comedy of the oddball duo launching their investigation. Ryan Reynolds voices the animated Pikachu, and here he tends to offer a PG-version of his Deadpool riffs. Sometimes clever, often silly, it all makes for a solidly diverting 100-ish minutes.

What I found most fascinating ,though, was the beautifully realized Pokemon in live action cinema. The animated beasts look more or less natural in the world of flesh and sunlight. And while it's been many, many years since I've seen those cartoon animals on cards (I lost interest quickly after the first collection of 100), I could recognize some of them instantly due to the artistry and fan service that went into their design. I may never need to see this movie again, but I left the theater satisfied and smiling, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

How do you review a film that has so quickly become the record-breaker of cinematic history? You don't really, especially when you consider the awesome power of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Could Stan Lee have known his awkward, funky characters would change history so distinctly and dominate our cultural consciousness for so long? Endgame is, as we all know, the culmination of a lengthy series of fascinating films, and a lot of the anxieties going into (and out of) this flick revolve around what will happen next. Only time will tell.

But I'm going to voice some opinions to challenge this movie. Not because I like playing devil's advocate (I do), and not because I dislike it (I don't). When movies have this kind of universal, positive cultural impact, it's fairly useless to praise it. But, much like with Infinity War, it's important for me to step back from the amazingly visceral power of this movie in the context of its franchise and consider it on its own.

Because it's a mess of a movie. Mind-numbingly plodding through most of its first half, it creeps along through the lives of the survivors as they deal with a halved world five years after Thanos and his snap. Woeful and bleak -- Black Widow is a notable low point of the film's pathetic pathos -- and occasionally cutesy for no reason (drunken, fat Thor is a lot to take in), it drags us through worst-case scenarios for its still sizeable cast. Their early takedown of a retired Thanos is a chilling start to the lengthy doldrums, and it's not until they discover the miracle of time travel that things start to get exciting.

But then, "exciting" is perhaps the wrong word. "Confusing" is perhaps better, as the film attempts to explain its own method twice -- once through Tilda Swinton, once through Mark Ruffalo -- and still can't quite make sense. Every single person I've asked about the film's second half has a different theory about how time travel works in the MCU, or how it doesn't work. I don't mind a whole new schema, which is what Endgame proposes, but it needs to be more carefully laid out. Plot is always secondary to me in films, but if the film works because of that plot device, you better damn well make it clear. Even in post-release press conferences and public statements, the filmmakers each make wildly different claims about how MCU time travel works. This is madness.

Essentially, as I understand it, the Avengers go back in time to steal the Infinity Stones at convenient moments in history and return to the present (which is actually five years in the future). The Hulk uses the Stones to snap again, returning everybody who got dusted. But while they steal the Stones, Thanos from the past realizes their plan and leaps forward in time with his army. A climactic battle sees everyone (well, everyone still alive) engaging in one of the most astounding battle sequences on film. Then Iron Man snaps again -- it's more than a little bewildering that the assembled Avengers, armies of Wakanda and Asgard, and assorted other heroes still can't beat Thanos's army if not Thanos himself -- and dusts the foes, killing himself in the process.

That's about as detailed as you can get without getting lost in the confusion. The movie carries you along, and you fully enjoy it in the moment. It's filled (choking, really) with fan service scenes and gimmicks, marvelously balances its enormous cast, and still manages to be frightfully entertaining. It also manages to make sense only as a culmination of many other movies. Much like serial television that is increasingly failing to stand on episodic terms, this movie feels like an exaggerated fever dream of Marvel fans.

Which is marvelous! Just not a proper film.

Then again, it features my favorite scene in any film yet this year: on the climactic battlefield, all the female heroes (minus, and I'll never forgive MCU for this, a now dead Black Widow) teaming up to cut a swath through enemy ranks. The traditional Avengers may be over now, but please please give us an all-female team-up flick! I'm already crying about it.

The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

She may want your children, but she's not quite willing to hold your attention.

The year is 1973 and caseworker Anna is investigating the disappearance of a client's two children. Arriving at Patricia's house, Anna discovers the children locked in a closet while Patricia fanatically cries for them not to be removed. Of course, the hysterical mother is in fact the only person who knows the truth: her children are being hunted by a supernatural entity known as La Llorona.

A character from Mexican folklore, La Llorona is the "Weeping Woman" who has lost her own children and seeks others to prey upon. She is an iconic stock character, not unlike Grimm characters, and her presence in this story is less woeful than terrifying. She lives in the dark, dripping the water from her tears along with the water of the river in which she drowned her own children. She's not a force of nature so much as a vengeful ghost of a real woman from three hundred years before -- we see her story in the film's intro and a few subsequent flashbacks -- and of course she is eventually undone by an obscure pseudo-religious reference that appears out of nowhere.

The latest installment in the Conjuring franchise -- yes, it was a surprise to me, too -- is almost too standalone to work. It has nothing to do with anything we've seen in the series yet, except for a sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it reference a priest makes to a case he worked on once before and a sudden cut to the Annabelle doll's face. That, and the knowledge that Tony Amendola apparently plays the same priest here as in Annabelle, Father Perez.

It's all entertaining enough, but it's neither as memorable nor disturbing as such source material should be. The flick relies heavily on jump-scares and standard horror techniques, so much so that it often feels like a genre workshop for advanced students. Not that it's all "bad" as you might say, but it left me feeling terribly disappointed. After the bizarre madhouse-carnival ride that was The Nun -- a wonderful new aesthetic I'm really digging, a la IT -- I was expecting another stylistic novelty. I mean, just look at the poster below! Something in exaggerated colors and muted brightness, something that felt like a folktale come alive, something like a grounded ghost story worthy of the time and place of its setting. Instead, we get a typical mess of "boos" and "aahs" and watered-down watery spirits.

Arctic (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Mads Mikkelsen is lost. Stranded alone somewhere in the Arctic Circle, he survives off fish and the plane in which we can only assumed he crash-landed. His distress beacon -- which we can similarly assume he uses to signal daily -- apparently works, as one day a helicopter appears in the sky. When it crashes in a sudden gust, we can see the hope draining from Mikkelsen's eyes. In a film with only two (?) actors and maybe enough dialogue to fill a single page, the weight is almost fully on Mikkelsen. He carries it admirably through physical strength and endurance and just enough actual acting skill to remind us that we're not watching a documentary.

The lone survivor of this latest aircraft crash is so badly injured she can barely move, and indeed doesn't move during the film. Mikkelsen works tirelessly to help her instead and eventually discovers the location of a building he estimates to be a few days' walk away. Lashing his nearly comatose companion to a sled, he drags her across the ghostly landscape, along snow drifts, across rocky outcroppings, and through icy crevasses. They never make it to the potential shelter. It's amazing they even survive the half-distance they travel together, considering the frostbite, polar bear, and broken bodies they suffer en route.

Oops, was that a spoiler? I suppose so. But did you really expect them -- or at least him -- to not survive? Unless you've seen Open Water, surely not. No, this is the film of man-against-nature in which man does not win, but does survive. At the last, another helicopter appears in the sky, and the deus ex machina is enough to make you wonder if this was all some strange Greek tragedy.

It was not. Gorgeously photographed by Tómas Örn Tómasson, the arctic comes thrillingly to life and captures the bleak aesthetic of a man alone against an infinite void. And while Mads is amazing, so are the athletes on American Ninja Warrior. The rest of Arctic is so dull, it's almost not worth commenting upon; narratively plain, lacking insight or depth, and only featuring a single brief encounter with a polar bear. It's so realistic it also suffers the boring realities of life. This is a survival film of Mikkelsen, sure, but also of the audience. You may not make it out alive. Or awake.

The Best of Enemies (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

The new season's follow-up to Green Book, The Best of Enemies manages to stay afloat largely due to the talents of its cast and its endearing story.

Endearing, if not quite heartwarming. It starts as a delicious mix of stinging comedy and drama as civil rights activist Ann Atwater and KKK leader C.P. Ellis clash time and again in their home of Durham, North Carolina, in the hot summer of 1971. Each leads their respective town factions in attempting to better their lives -- no, that's not quite right. Let's edit it to say that Atwater fights to better the lives of black folk in Durham while Ellis seems quite content to keep things as they are, with the occasional white terrorist attack against the already disadvantaged black folk as a reminder that they aren't welcome.

It's exactly this shift in perspective that reveals the central problem with this movie: Much like the "Best Picture" winner last year, Enemies washes over lots of its issues with a cutesy, sentimental facade that suggests to a casual consumerist audience humor and heart in issues of life and death over racial anxieties. This maudlin sensibility is mobilized as the movie largely moves us through the perspective of the Ellis character, whose character arcs from strong KKK leader to weak KKK leader. It's not terribly dynamic, and its centrality indicates the film's deep ambivalence to the horrors lurking just off-screen.

That said, the character arc is surprisingly realistic, something the film's most vocal critics completely miss. Sure, Taraji P. Henson's Atwater character is severely short-served by the script, but this movie isn't meant to lionize an angry black woman (for better or worse; I personally would favor that movie that allows her to amaze us with her power). It's meant for the bigoted white folk in the audience, however few of them there may be, and for all of us white folk who tend to be silent or distanced from such issues. It's meant to show us how even the slightest change in our mannerisms, behavior, and beliefs can have such a shattering impact on our community.

In this way and in this light, I feel justified in saying I liked the movie. It reads more like a Hallmark special than a feature film, but sometimes that's okay too. As the two factions of Durham engage in their "charrette" -- town hall meetings to discuss and solve a series of self-identified social conflicts -- the film rolls along in familiar, predictable patterns designed to put the audience at ease; a few nasty shocks keep us engaged, though. The performances are solid if bland, the style functional if tasteless, but you can feel the beat of its heart. Good intentions and workmanlike craft make The Best of Enemies worth a watch and discussion, if nothing more.